Tingle

Chapter 4

Krista V. Melgarejo

Thoughts of having to move away from home for at least a year never occurred to me, let alone living independently in Metro Manila. Even though I had already taken short visits to the capital for official business, I never found the place endearing, treating it as somewhere I’d just pass through before getting to my real destination.

But duty-bound to the students of the University of the Philippines as its new student regent, I obliged. Despite this internal resistance, my new responsibility to the students was far more important than my personal preference. But had the decision been mine alone that year, I would never have agreed to be uprooted from Davao.

I landed at NAIA on a late Tuesday afternoon, with only a few bags of my possessions along with me. What was supposed to be a two-hour plane ride to Manila stretched itself out into a whole day preoccupation. We had to be transferred from Davao to General Santos earlier that day because a damaged plane was still blocking the Davao airport’s runway from a mishap a few days earlier. I remember looking out of the window of the sedan that took me to UP’s flagship campus, passing along the manicured central business district in Taguig and the traffic-ridden C5 road, the setting sun that peered through the unfamiliar concrete towers got me exhilarated about a new life, even though I knew it was temporary.

I began to call UP Diliman my new home and acquainted myself with a new routine. I would take my media ethics class at Plaridel Hall during Tuesdays and Thursdays for one and a half hours a day while most of my time in a week would be spent at the sectoral regent’s office located at the basement of the Vinzons Hall. At the end of a school day, I would usually encounter my newfound activist friends at this building for a quick chat or a smoke before they rushed to their next meeting. It was also on the grounds of this student center where I would meet my first partner.

While we didn’t see each other frequently after our first meeting, several political activities gave us opportunities to see each other again. And despite my assertion among friends that I was straight, I finally surrendered and embraced the truth. After a few weeks of tension-filled interactions, she and I finally decided to get together.

Perhaps in the liberating culture of UP, I was fortunate enough to be surrounded by other LGBT folk who would become my lifelong friends. Although most of them were younger than I am, I became their student as I frequently asked for their advice on how to navigate through a romantic relationship for the first time.

For someone who just came out and is in her first relationship, the word “difficult” was an understatement. Not only was it hard enough to deal with the growing pains that came with a young relationship but having to deal with the harsh judgment of my s****l preference was an entirely different matter. While other young couples would worry about what to do on their next dates, ours was preoccupied with what people would think if we held hands in public.

During the last month of my term as student regent, she and I had to deal with my impending return to Davao City. This meant that we had to prepare ourselves for a long-distance arrangement if we wanted to keep our relationship alive. But on one of those seemingly mundane nights together, with sadness and honesty in her voice, she asked me if I could stay in Manila. While Davao was my one and only home, Manila had become another home to me in the process. Even today, I still could not believe that despite my age at the time, I was able to give up Davao for Manila, believing that our love would make it all worthwhile.

Despite the lack of a solid plan, I took a leap of faith and applied for graduate studies at Diliman. My interest to pursue higher studies only came second to finding an excuse to stay in Manila for love. As fate would have it, I got accepted into the graduate school of the College of Science. Little did I know at the time that this would also spark my serious pursuit of a science career.

But I still had to return home for the long break to make up for lost time with my family. During those few weeks in Davao, my aunt started convincing me that before I return to Manila, I should tell my parents the truth.

I had two friends over for dinner that night as it was the eve before my return to Manila. Out of the blue, my aunt told my parents and the rest of the table that I was going to say something important. Panic started to rise and my eyes were going back and forth in confusion, looking to my aunt and to my friends. I then started sobbing before I started to blurt out these words, “Hindi ako straight.” I figured that maybe saying it that way would soften the blow for my parents: “I’m not straight” rather than “I’m a lesbian.” The revelation left my father speechless, and my mother in denial and confusion. Perhaps to help with the already dramatic situation, my gay best friend immediately tried to explain and support what just came out of my mouth. I, on the other hand, just lost my appetite and got exhausted from trying to calm myself down after the ambush.

While I wish that I could have come out to my parents on different terms, being able to tell them who I truly was and that I had a partner back in Manila released me from the burden that I had had to endure for almost a year. The morning after, my parents still couldn’t wrap their heads around the fact that their only daughter was queer. I couldn’t quite remember what they told me on the day of my flight as there was so much to think about that day, but I remember feeling relieved that they didn’t have the heart to disown me over my s****l preference.

The more time my girlfriend and I could freely spend together (as I did not have to take frequent official trips anymore), the more we started to grow apart, our unresolved issues becoming more apparent. The illusions of young love gradually started to fade, and we now had to deal with the realities of mundane days and the hard work involved in sustaining a relationship. Despite the attempts to revive our relationship, the two-year run ended with a vague email and eventually finding out that she was already seeing someone else.

During the weeks and months after the breakup, I was forced to unlearn the naïve notions I had about love and relationships. That maybe not everyone succeeds the first time or that people do really change over the course of the relationship. At one time, I even regretted my decision of staying in Manila because it seemed to have lost its purpose.

But four years later, here I am still in awe of the capital. It might not be the relaxed-paced life I was used to back in Davao, but I have grown to love the mystery and charm of Manila. More than giving me a jumpstart in my career, it is where I could express who I am and be whatever I wanted to be not only in terms of my expressing my gender, but also my love for both the sciences and art. Manila has given me a new life.

It was during the time of the break-up that I started to rediscover my long-lost relationship with writing. I cannot recall anymore how many bad pieces I had written then but writing became the therapeutic outlet that I badly needed. It was a long December day and I had just come back from a talk in a relatively far place in Rizal province. I was waiting for my professor to return to his office and I suddenly felt the urge to sit down in front of a computer and write something down. It turned out to be a poem about the two-year relationship that has stayed in my writing archives. Later, writing became a habit to help me heal from extreme feelings of sadness, my own personal therapeutic method, if you will. While most of my past pieces referred to specific people who were previously part of my life, I also began to write about a more personal take on my struggles as a queer person in a highly conservative Philippine setting.

Months passed and I was still trying my best to fill the vacuum left by the previous relationship, my words still hinted of sadness and anger. And it was these words that led me to a most beautiful accident.

I remember eating lunch with my friends who had perhaps grown tired of hearing me talk about the breakup, so they thought of a dare. The condition was, I had to get my haircut if I mentioned or reacted to anything about my ex-partner ever again. Stupidly believing that I could win the dare, I willingly agreed to it. But to my (mis)fortune, I lost the dare after reacting to a question about my ex.

Ensuring that I would not back out of the deal, my friends had to drag me to the hairdresser. I nervously sat in the chair as the hairdresser arranged it into a simple ponytail before chopping the whole thing off. And with one go, my long hair was gone. Seeing the neatly tied clump of hair served as a reminder that there was no going back.

Still unsure if I made the right decision, I had no other choice but to wear the new hairstyle until it grew back. But when friends saw me and complimented me for the shorter hair, I thought that maybe this could work. I eventually agreed to my friend’s invitation to go to a barbershop to get another haircut.

It was in getting my haircut that I soon came to realize that I never saw myself as a lesbian who passed off as a straight girl as I really enjoyed the process of shifting my gender expression— easily trading salons for barbers, blouses for oxford shirts. It came naturally to me and I noticed how more particular I became when it came to details about how I looked and presented compared to before.

I was quite nervous when I went home for Christmas that year. While I had already come out to my parents about two years ago at the time, I thought they and the rest of my family were not yet prepared to see me in my new butch expression. Surprisingly, no one seemed to care much about how I looked when they saw me at the company Christmas party. I was relieved that no one asked me about why I changed how I looked or anything about my gender.

However, in another family gathering for Christmas, my great grandmother who was almost a hundred years old barely recognized me. As I approached to pay her respect, she asked me whose child I was. My mother and great aunt were laughing as they answered her question, reminding her that I was her great-granddaughter. My great-grandmother could not reconcile who was in front of her and the way I looked before. She kept insisting that I was a guy and I just laughed it off. We all ended up taking a photo together after that incident.

It might have come a little late compared to others, but I have never felt more confident with who and what I am. I can’t wait for the next leg of my journey.